To restart means to stop something and then begin it again from the beginning. When your computer freezes and you restart it, you shut it down completely and boot it back up. When a basketball referee calls for a restart after the ball goes out of bounds, the teams return to their positions and resume play.

Sometimes we restart because something went wrong: a video game glitches, so you restart the level. Other times we restart by choice: maybe you're baking cookies and the first batch burns, so you restart with a fresh sheet and more careful timing.

The word suggests a deliberate fresh beginning rather than just continuing from where you stopped. If you pause a movie to get a snack, you're not restarting it when you press play again. You only restart if you go back to the opening credits. When a teacher says “let's restart this discussion,” she means everyone should approach the topic fresh, setting aside what was said before.

People also use restart more broadly to mean making a fresh start in life, like someone might talk about restarting their exercise routine after a long break. A restart gives you another chance to get things right.